Divided We Rot (One Nation Under Zombies Book 3)

by Raymond Lee

  “I’d think about it.”

  Damian gasped as if insulted. “You’d think about it? What do you mean you’d think about it?”

  “I like you and all, but the quiet would be kind of nice,” Hal answered, winking at Elijah as the teen laughed.

  “You’d miss me,” Damian muttered, narrowing his eyes. “I’m a fucking delight and you know it.”

  Hal shook his head and turned back toward the direction of the hospital, laughing. He’d never abandon Damian or any of the others but teasing the younger man had been too tempting to resist. He started walking again, Damian and Elijah following along, but stopped as Trey stepped out of the hospital, looked at them, and walked off, headed in the direction of the greenhouse. “There’s another way you can help us find out where they’re keeping her.”

  “Nuh uh.” Damian raised his hands and backed up, shaking his head. “He already told me to stay away from him. You were there. You heard him.”

  “Yes, and I heard the unresolved issues between the two of you in his voice,” Hal answered. “People snap at the people they care about most and they push away the people they want close.”

  Damian’s face scrunched up. “Are you matchmaking right now? I know you aren’t matchmaking two dudes right now while we’re deep inside this cult of honk-if-you-love-blue-eyed-surfer-Jesus-loving homophobes.”

  Hal did another ten-count as he took a deep breath, fighting against the urge to smack Damian upside the head.

  “You all right? You look like you’re about to pop a blood vessel.”

  “You have that effect,” Hal replied drily. “I’m not matchmaking. That man gave you a warning earlier, and I’m not talking about when he told you to stay away from him. He knows something. You need to talk to him and find out what he knows. He’s been here longer than us. He just might know where we can find Leah, or at the very least he can possibly tell us what places not to bother looking so we don’t waste a lot of time. The clock is ticking for Leah and it’s ticking for Raven and Cruz. We don’t have time to walk around in circles sniffing around in places someone else has already sniffed out.”

  “Fine.” Damian cast a glance at Trey’s retreating back before returning his attention to Hal. “If he attacks me and I gotta kick his ass you just remember you’re the one who made me talk to him.”

  “What if he kicks your ass?” Elijah asked.

  Damian’s head went back in a snake-like motion as he curled his upper lip and slowly rolled his eyes from the top of Elijah’s head down to his feet and back up again. “I wish a bitch could,” he said before pointing his nose in the air and walking away in the direction Trey had gone.

  “Meet us at the hospital when you’re done,” Hal called out to him.

  “Forgive me if it’s wrong to say this,” Elijah said, “but that was really gay.”

  “Yup,” Hal agreed. “That’s why we have to find out where they’re keeping Leah before they snatch Damian away too.”

  “I thought you wanted them to.”

  “It was an idea, but only in a controlled way where we could follow and know where he was being kept. It serves us no purpose to have him taken away if we aren’t tracking him. Also, I wanted Damian to purposely reveal his sexuality. I know him well enough to know that if he gets caught without meaning to and these people try to lock him away somewhere he’s going to go into fight mode. Damian’s a pretty good fighter and by that I mean he’s not going to stop swinging until they make him stop and I’m afraid what that could mean for him.”

  “You think they’d kill him?” Elijah’s eyes widened.

  “If they didn’t, he’d probably kill them. That man’s a tiger.” Hal jerked his head toward the hospital, gesturing for Elijah to follow him as he again started moving toward the white building.

  “I thought we were going to mingle with people today and try to find out stuff.”

  “We are, but first I want to know if the twins found out anything. They said Leah attacked Elsie. If there was actually a serious incident someone might have been hurt. They could have been brought here.”

  “Do you really think Leah could have hurt someone bad enough for them to need medical treatment?”

  Hal looked at the teen. “Yesterday morning she made a Molotov cocktail and blew up a truckload of people. While I think she’s normally a nonviolent person I think it’s safe to say she’s pretty dangerous when threatened.”

  “True,” Elijah said. “That bomb was awesome. I hope we get her back.”

  “Me too, son.” Hal opened the front door to the medical building and stepped inside. The small waiting area to their right was empty as were several of the cots lining the walls on their left. Gemma looked up from a cot she was currently stripping and tossed the bundle of sheets onto the mattress when she saw them.

  “Hey,” she greeted them as she walked over to the vacant front desk she normally occupied. “Did you come to see your friends or do you need medical attention?”

  “We came to check in on our friends,” Hal answered. “You look very nice today.”

  Gemma looked down at the black pencil skirt and soft pink sweater she wore and shrugged. She smiled, her cheeks matching the color of the sweater as she looked back at him “My Sunday best, I guess.”

  “I didn’t see you at church this morning.”

  “Yeah.” Her smile disappeared. “We had an incident here this morning so I missed out. Father John will be at the church all day and he does a whole repeat performance so I’m sure I’ll get my daily dose of The Word at some point.”

  “Not a fan of church?” Hal inquired.

  “I believe in God,” Gemma answered, her voice lower than before. She opened her mouth to say more, then seemed to think better of it. “Your friend is in the same room and I don’t think her sister has left her side. You know the way up. I really need to get these cots changed.”

  “Did you lose a lot of people?”

  Gemma frowned, then her eyes widened as she realized what he was asking. “Oh, no, not in that way. We discharged quite a few this morning. Depending on the time of day you come in these cots can all be filled or they can be empty. If anyone is seriously ill they wouldn’t be down here. People are usually just here until we get them moved to a private or semi-private room or we release them with medication.”

  Hal scanned the remaining patients in the room, searching for anyone with signs of having been in a physical altercation. He saw a portly man lying flat on his back snoring and a young girl around ten years of age resting, a woman he assumed to be her mother sitting at her side reading. There were a couple other people reading or resting, none with bruises or abrasions.

  “You can go on up and check on Pimjai,” Hal told Elijah. “I’ll help Gemma.”

  “Oh, no, it’s fine,” she said. “There’s no need to do that. This is my job.”

  “It’s Sunday and everyone else gets the day off,” Hal told her as Elijah left them to go upstairs as he’d been told.

  “Not those of us who are essential.”

  “Well, you could at least receive a little help.” Hal walked over to the cot next to the one she’d been stripping when he’d entered and pulled off the sheets.

  “They don’t really like for others to work on Sundays here,” Gemma said as she scooped up the bundle of sheets she’d discarded and tossed them in the rolling bin between the beds. “And sick people have been in here. I’d hate for you to catch something.”

  “I’m sure there are greater things to worry about than that.” Hal caught her eye and held it a moment before she averted her gaze, nervously glancing around to see if anyone was listening in. As before, he found her behavior indicative she knew something. “You said there was an incident this morning?”

  “It was nothing major,” she assured him as she rolled the bin past him to the next cot and removed the pillowcase.

  Hal gripped the sheet at the foot of the bed, helped her pull it off and held onto it as they stood face to face w
ith the cot between them. He lowered his voice. “I’m not trying to get you in trouble, Gemma, but my friend has not been seen since we got here and this morning I was told there was an altercation between her and someone in the single women’s quarters. I need to know if she was hurt or if she hurt someone. Has anyone come in here looking like they got in a fight? Have you heard anything?”

  She stared at him as she nibbled her bottom lip, and he could see the indecision in her eyes. He released his hold on the sheet, allowing her to bundle it and toss it into the bin. She cast another glance at the nearby patients and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Hal. I honestly haven’t seen her and I haven’t heard of any incidents happening in the women’s quarters. Was she asked to leave?”

  “No. David said she was unhappy here and they offered her the option of leaving but she refused so now they have her in something called isolation.”

  All the color drained out of Gemma’s face. “Is your friend usually violent?”

  “No,” Hal answered with certainty, refusing to judge Leah by the incident with the firebomb. She’d thrown that bottle to save their lives. He’d done worse to save lives. “That’s why I find all of this very perplexing. She also had been near starving when my group found her yet she didn’t show for dinner yesterday. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the misfortune of nearly starving but when you experience a period of hunger like that you don’t tend to skip meals.”

  “No, you don’t,” she agreed with him, lightly rubbing a circle over her belly before she finished stripping the cot and tossed the remaining sheet into the bin. “Gossip is highly discouraged here but I’m decently friendly with a few single ladies. I’ll see if I can find out anything about an incident happening in their quarters.”

  “Thank you, Gemma, I’d appreciate that.”

  She nodded her head and worried her lip a little with her teeth as she gripped the edge of the bin and looked around. “I don’t know if it has to do with anything,” she said in a near whisper, “but the incident was a bite.”

  “Someone was bitten by a zombie?”

  Gemma shook her head and stepped closer. “One of the guys on the security staff came in with a real nasty bite on his neck. We treat all bites as possible infections and that guard is still in isolation here as a mandatory precaution, but he said it wasn’t a zombie and my brother said he didn’t think it was either. He wouldn’t tell me what he thought happened, but I saw that bite and it wasn’t from an animal. If it wasn’t from a zombie it was from a very pissed off or terrified person. It was still bleeding and he said it happened last night. Someone tried to take a serious chunk out of him and there were scratches on his face and arms.”

  “Someone was trying to fight him off?”

  Gemma shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, and I don’t know if it had anything to do with your friend.”

  Hal nodded. “I appreciate the information just the same. You said the guard is in isolation here. Do you know where Leah would be if David put her in isolation?”

  “That’s a whole other type of isolation,” she told him. “To my knowledge no one knows where it is except for David, certain members of the security staff, and the people taken there.”

  “The people taken there don’t speak of it when they get out?”

  “The few I’ve known to get back out of isolation barely speak at all.” She looked down at her feet and released a deep breath before looking up again. “I can tell you care about your friend and aren’t the type to just carry on without knowing she’s all right but please, Hal, be careful. Some of these people are really loyal to David.”

  She wrapped her hands around the edge of the bin and pushed it across the room to strip the rest of the beds, leaving Hal with a cold chill skating up his spine and even more determination burning in his gut.

  “Trey!” Damian ran to catch up with the taller man, cursing under his breath as he noticed he’d started walking faster. “Trey!”

  The man he sought stopped and turned, irritation clear in his dark eyes as he nodded at a trio of men leaving the barn he’d been headed toward before pinning Damian with a heated glare.

  “I know you heard me,” Damian said, catching up, careful to keep his voice low enough the departing men couldn’t overhear.

  “I’m pretty sure you also heard me tell you to stay the hell away from me.”

  “You know, you have a lot of nerve acting pissed with me. You’re the one who did me shady.”

  Trey shoved his hands into coat pockets and laughed. “Oh, that’s rich, D. Like threatening to out someone isn’t shady?”

  “If I’d wanted to out you I would have done it,” Damian snapped back. “I just wanted you to be honest.”

  “No, you just wanted me to want you. Well, I didn’t. I loved my wife. I still do. You can believe it or not, I don’t really give a shit, but I do care about my life.” He looked around, peeking inside the barn to make sure it was all clear before continuing. “This isn’t the place to be discussing these things. I think you’ve already caught on to that because if you were acting your normal proud gay self you’d be in isolation.”

  “So you do know about that?”

  “Yeah, I know about it.” His nostrils flared. “If you say anything to get me put in isolation you can bet your ass I’m taking you with me and whatever they do to me in there I’m doing worse to you.”

  “What the hell, man?” Damian realized his voice had elevated and looked around. They were outside a barn next to the goat pen. Cows were on the other side and chickens ran among them all. He could see people walking along paths, mingling with each other as they went along on their way to wherever they chose to be but no one paid them any attention. He didn’t see any security staff in the area. They tended to stay along the outer fence and close to David’s house, as well as the church or medical center, anywhere large groups could gather and possibly cause trouble. “Why do you think I’d try to get you thrown in isolation? How would I even do it, out my own damn self?”

  “Just tell me what you want, Damian, and if it’s got to do with us back—”

  “I honestly don’t give a shit about you, Trey. I quit giving a shit about you a long time ago.”

  “Yet here you are in my face.”

  “And I’m seriously going to punch you in the face if you don’t can the attitude. I don’t want to talk to you at all, but I was asked to, to help a friend.”

  Trey didn’t say anything but he gestured with his head for Damian to follow as he entered the barn and grabbed two plastic cups off of a shelf above large bags of corn. He scooped corn into both cups and handed Damian one. “I like to feed the goats. If we’re going to talk we might as well do it without looking so damn conspicuous. I don’t want anyone knowing I know you.”

  “Wow. Bitter, table for one.”

  Trey glared at him and shook his head in disgust as he led the way back out of the barn over to the fence. “You’ve been openly gay so long I don’t see you hiding it for long,” Trey told him as he held out a hand of corn and the miniature goats rushed toward him. “Being seen talking to you could be life-threatening.”

  “Well I haven’t been busted yet and I don’t plan on getting busted. I don’t plan on staying here long. We only came because one of the women in our group is pregnant and she was having pains. She’s been in the hospital since we arrived. That Elsie woman came around when we were at the hospital, asking us questions about who was single and shit. Turned out one of the women in my group was gay and we didn’t even know it so nobody thought to warn her not to say anything even though this place was setting off alarm bells for me and Hal.”

  “That your boyfriend?”

  “Hal?” Damian laughed. “Not in the slightest. Hal’s like family, kind of the unofficial leader I guess.”

  “So the woman, she said something to give away she’s gay and you haven’t seen her since?”

  Damian nodded. “You’ve been here longer than us and you kind of warned me earlie
r. They told us there was some kind of incident this morning, she attacked Elsie or some shit, and they put her in isolation. You know anything about that?”

  Trey tossed a handful of feed toward the middle of the pen and the back half of the goats raced off after it. He extracted another handful for the ones who’d stayed near him. “This is a good place for food and shelter. The fence and all the security helps you sleep at night, you know? It’s not so easy sleeping at night if you got secrets to hide though. By the time I got here I had the full beard and didn’t look anything like I looked in my fame days. Hell, we all look whooped now, just trying to survive. Had they known the things I rapped about and the language I used I might have been in isolation. I’ve heard of it plenty although they try to keep it a secret. If you aren’t living the way they think God intended they take you there and they change you.”

  “Conversion therapy?”

  “For the gay people, I’m sure. You heard that sermon this morning. As soon as Father John started going off on that subject I knew they’d caught one. We always get a sermon like that after they find one. If they find a woman who’s been fooling around we get sermons on that too.”

  “Do you know where isolation is?”

  “We aren’t supposed to talk about it,” Trey answered, “so it’s hard to say. I’m sure it’s on the grounds because they only leave to scavenge and search for people. I have an idea, but I’m not sure. It’s kind of crazy.”

  “I’ll take anything I can get, man. I have to get my friend out of there.”

  “Good luck with that,” Trey said, flinging more corn out to the goats. “Think about it. Isolation is like a jail. They’ll have guards on it and they’ll have it where it’s always monitored and escaping isn’t an option. Where do you see all the guards at around here?”

  “The fence,” Damian answered. “And David’s house, the church, and the hospital.”